Rowe’s work is concerned with the bittersweet passing of childhood. Pulling from a huge wealth of sources of popular culture and primarily, films from the 1980s; Rowe reconstructs infamous props and scenes from these films. The primary material is reclaimed MDF. The objects are painstakingly carved, sanded and cut from this material, then glued and affixed together to create a life size replica of the prop in the associated film. He consciously collects all the dust produced from making his work to make the ‘Temporary Monument Series’; a series of sandcastles made entirely from MDF dust continuing the recycled theme.

Rowe creates intricately detailed objects which show a number of different textures and surfaces making the paper, metal and electrical components of the object tactile and believable. Rowe creates props from films which have a recurring theme of travelling. Whether it be to future fictional worlds that never arrived or far off worlds of fantasy. The flux capacitor and hover board from ‘Back to the Future’, and the cosmic key from the lesser known ‘Masters of the Universe’ are prime examples of this.

A lot of the items Rowe chooses to focus on demonstrate a means of escape. Yet the innate un-usability of everything Rowe constructs is paramount to his concepts. By purposely adding each intricate detail to create an item that looks distinctively life like, the blandness and monotone of the MDF material throws back at you the frustrating fact that it is un-useable and still in many ways a fantasy and failure as a physical portal to other worlds.